


In Your Image

by Cryowen



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme, M/M, Obsession, Pygmalion, Unrequited Love, sadfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryowen/pseuds/Cryowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could not remember the last time a single project managed to hold his attention for more than a single day—maybe two days, at the most—if indeed any pursuit ever had. All that mattered was this. He had stayed up for three straight days in order to finish the bust in clay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Image

**Author's Note:**

> So, once upon a time I was an AC kink meme write!fag. In case people are interested in seeing what I’m trying to work back up to, here’s some sadfic for this prompt:
>
>> The Pygmalion myth came up in one of my lectures today and my mind went into the gutter. A sculptor ‘not interested in women’ turns all his energy into making a statue that is so beautiful he falls in love with it. He dresses it in clothes and even sleeps with the statue before it is given life so that they live happily ever after.
>> 
>> Yeah, I couldn’t stop thinking Leonaro/Ezio here. Even started thinking about the scar being a mistake or maybe a fault in the materials but then I realized I was thinking too much on the subject. My mind was mostly running in circles over the image of Leonardo caressing and kissing a cold statue that looks like Ezio.

* * *

He could not remember the last time a single project managed to hold his attention for more than a single day—maybe two days, at the most—if indeed any pursuit ever had. A few recent commissions were intriguing enough to occupy his mind a couple hours at a time before drifting off onto one of his own tangents, but even those now lay completely forgotten. The patrons involved would surely hunt him down and hound him into an early grave, but he could not be brought to care.  
  
All that mattered was _this_.  
  
Oh, it had started innocently enough; just that one sketch while his beloved slept. Ezio had nodded off waiting for Leonardo to finish fixing his father’s blade, and the artist could never have brought himself to wake the would-be-assassin. Just the one sketch. There had been such raw pain in the boy’s face—he had been just a boy then, hadn’t he?—it made Leonardo’s heart ache. It was only a week later that the blond found himself smoothing the tension away from those strong brows, and stroking a thumb lovingly across the full lower lip. “There we are, _amico mio_. Sleep easily now.” Leonardo pressed a kiss to the moist brow—lingering over the carefully sculpted fringe of hair—before stumbling off to bed. He had stayed up for three straight days in order to finish the bust in clay.  
  
The torso cost him five days and a week.  
  
Calloused, scarred, paint-stained hands kneaded chunks of earth-red clay into warm pliability. It had been months since he last saw Ezio. There were several busts now. Ezio sleeping—the first bust. Ezio sad. Ezio pleased. Ezio angered. Ezio perplexed, thoughtful, gorgeous. Always gorgeous, but never smiling. Smirks, scowls, and forced smiles were all Leonardo was allowed to see of his friend behind the curtain of cold efficiency. There had been times, when the young assassin still showed up at least once a week with a new codex page, when Leonardo had thought himself so very close to breaking through that veil. But now… Now there was too much blood on Ezio’s hands, too many lives crushed beneath his strong fingers, and Leonardo’s hands were stained red with clay.  
  
 _This_ was Leonardo’s secret.  
  
He could go for a week—maybe a month, but no more—without bringing the fruits of his unwholesome obsession out into the well-lit sanctum of his studio. He kept them hidden. The first bust, even the second, he could have easily explained away to Ezio or his assistant. The assassin was, after all, a beautiful young man. “You deserve better than this, caro mio. Perhaps… marble… would suit you better? Ezio…” Leonardo paused, realizing then—not that he was talking to himself, or the statue, for neither was unusual—that he had spoken his friend’s name with more reverence than was natural. “Ezio…” Running tired hands over the strong, molded shoulders and down an equally muscled back, the artist felt his resolve coming undone. “Ezio.” Letting his forehead rest against that of the statue, it was all Leonardo could do to keep from digging his fingers into the cooling clay. He could do better than this. He had to do better.  
  
And this is where he found himself.  
  
Aching, exhausted, famished—Leonardo finally allowed himself to collapse into a nearby chair. His joints burned, knees and fingers refusing to unbend without radiating pain through the nearby muscle, causing the artist to suck breath in hissing gasps. No amount of conscious decision would have stopped this inevitable outcome, he decided. Leonardo had pushed himself too fast, too hard, with the statue’s completion in sight. He had waited until things settled in his new workshop—until Ezio had once again abandoned him—to even order the stone. Work had been slow, painstaking, and even torturous in the amount of time it had taken to complete the smallest section. Glancing for a moment at an aging commission, he realized just how greatly he loathed the very thought of completing the Duke of Milan’s horse in such a medium.  
  
He took no joy in stone.

Struggling from his seat, Leonardo approached his work once more. The fringe which framed Ezio’s brow, the hollow created by his collarbone, the curve of his wrist—all seemed flawless in their accuracy. All seemed… empty. There were none of the scars Leonardo had glimpsed as he patched minor wounds on his Assassin—no lines from blades or splotches from burns—save for the single mar across those full lips. How could he erase _that_ , when it had graced an angel’s face the first time they met. The scar had still been new, then—fresh and pink and tender—the mark of a young man’s lust for life. Yes, this was Ezio as Leonardo had first met him. Aged to a man, certainly, but with none of the signs or marks of a killer. This was Ezio as he _should_ have been.  
  
As he would never be.  
  
It was weeks later—how many months?—that he next heard from his friend. The statue had been all but forgotten, sitting hidden in a corner, where Leonardo could not be reminded of the hollowness its beauty held. Every time the temptation arose to caress a cold cheek, or to kiss those lips, only the memory of misery restrained him.  
  
“Leonardo. What is this?”  
  
Where he was bent over a final codex page, the artist tensed. Ezio’s voice had been so hollow of late, so cold—even towards him—that the slightest inflection fell like a hammer blow. “W-What, Ezio?”  
  
“ _This_.”  
  
Turning, slowly, ever so slowly, Leonardo forced himself to look where the Assassin was standing. A gloved hand held back the curtain, the other had removed the tarp, and the manifestation of Leonardo’s shame was cast into surreal relief by the guttering candles around them. “Oh, that. Yes, well…”  
  
“It is me, isn’t it?” There was quiet appraisal in the younger man’s voice. He remained looking at the statue for some time, expression unreadable beneath his hood and the set of his shoulders painfully neutral. “Why have you not shown it to me before? When did you finish it?”  
  
“I… That is… It isn’t finished… Yet.” A cold sweat was running down the artist’s neck, his knuckles white from the grip he maintained on the edge of his workbench.  
  
“You do not intend to complete this one.” Not a question. Ezio knew. Somehow, he knew.  
  
The taste in Leonardo’s throat turned sour, poisonous. All the busts he had discarded before leaving Firenze, all of the sketches he had burned, and all for nothing. “No, amico mio; mi dispiace.”  
  
“Shall I come back for the codex tomorrow? It is late.”  
  
“No. No… I am nearly finished. Just a moment more.”  
  
Ezio’s casual visits ceased. It would be well over a year before Leonardo saw his friend once more. Three years and a flying machine before Leonardo could see the truth behind the Assassin’s unsmiling face. And so the artist found himself—so long after he first caught a glimpse of a young face over Maria Auditore’s shoulder—kneeling at the feet of his love in marble.

Leaning on the railing a floor above, hidden in the shadows weak moonlight could not reach, Ezio watched as his friend was wracked with shuddering sobs. The artist’s shoulders shook and trembled, his breath coming in hiccups and choking gasps. Ezio stood, and watched, as Leonardo’s trembling hands ghosted over cold marble in the half-darkness. No candles had been lit when the assassin crept in through an upper window, and only the full moon’s silver glow cast any light at all into the studio. Color was leached from Leonardo’s skin, making him pale even beside the statue, even as the marble of Ezio’s reflection seemed to come alive beneath trembling fingers. A reflection which lacked only the marks of violence Ezio’s own body bore.  
  
Strange, that a figure in stone should shine with more life than the man who sculpted it.  
  
His cheeks soaked by heavy tears, unkempt hair falling in his eyes, the artist traced every definition of muscle he had carved over the course of years. The base remained unfinished—Leonardo had been completely honest in his long-past apology—but every inch of stone which made up the seated figure was free from dust or other marks of time. Leonardo rested his head against a sculpted knee, chapped lips brushing against unfeeling stone, as exhaustion consumed his melancholy brain.  
  
“Tell me, caro mio,” Ezio breathed into the darkness, “why do you weep? Because I am not your sculpture, or the statue is not me?”


End file.
